Chef Joyce's Dreams:
The Story Behind
Wakamama Omakase
Chef Joyce: How One Woman's Sustainability Movement Became Wakamama Omakase
Chef Joyce Cheng did not take the usual route to the omakase counter. She was trained as an industrial engineer. She spent years teaching sustainability workshops before she ever ran a restaurant. And she built her career around a single, non-negotiable motivation: she wanted her two sons — and the generation they belong to — to grow up in a world where they could still look up and see blue skies and white clouds.
That wish is the real origin story of Wakamama Omakase, the 100% vegan Japanese Omakase tasting menu she founded in Singapore in 2021. Every fermented grain, every zero-waste choice, every plant-forward course served across her counter is an extension of the same movement she started more than a decade ago — long before "sustainable dining" became a marketing phrase.
An International Citizen: Hong Kong, Toronto, Singapore
Joyce was born in Hong Kong, nurtured in Toronto, and is now a resident of Singapore — a genuinely international life lived across three of the world's most dynamic cities. Each left a clear mark on her.
Hong Kong gave her the Cantonese instinct that good food begins with what is freshest and closest to hand. Toronto shaped her conscience around food systems, the environment, and the idea that a meal is also a political act. Singapore — a modern garden city that has made sustainability a national project — gave her the right soil to finally plant her restaurant.
She often describes herself not as a chef who happens to care about the planet, but as a soul born in a simpler time, before global warming, before mass plastic pollution, before the advertising machine that taught the rest of her generation to want disposable things. The work she does now is an attempt to bring a little of that earlier world back.
The Work Before the Restaurant: Teaching Sustainability Around the World
Long before Wakamama existed, Joyce was already doing the work — quietly, unpaid, and internationally.
Since 2014, she has conducted non-profit sustainability and upcycling workshops, first in Singapore and then further afield. Her volunteer teaching has taken her to Kazakhstan, South Africa, Seoul, Taiwan, Nepal, Hong Kong, and across Singapore. In each place, she taught the same core lessons: waste segregation, fermentation, gluten-free vegan cooking, and the small daily choices that, repeated at scale, change the world.
In Singapore specifically, Joyce has led or contributed to programmes with an unusually broad list of institutions — NEA (National Environment Agency), NUS, NTU, ITE, community centres, local schools, the Singapore Art Museum (SAM), and Six Senses Hotel, among others.
She was teaching fermentation and sustainable living to these audiences years before either became fashionable in Singapore's dining scene.
This is the part of her story most easily overlooked — and the part that matters most. WakaMama Omakase is not the beginning of her sustainability work. It is the latest and most delicious chapter of it.
Wakamama: The Concept Behind the Cuisine
Everything Joyce has built sits under a single philosophy she calls Back2Basic.
The idea is straightforward. Everything on this planet is connected — the food we eat, the packaging it comes in, the personal products we use, the lifestyles we choose. You cannot separate personal health from planetary health. Back2Basic is her argument, repeated across every platform she runs, that living more gently is both simpler and more joyful than the modern world makes it look.
The evolution of Wakamama, step by step, looks like this:
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2014 — Non-profit sustainable workshops begin.
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2019 — Joyce launches a home-based gluten-free vegan business.
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2020 — Back2Basic Picnic Cafe opens, serving gluten-free vegan cuisine.
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2021 — Wakamama Vegan Japanese Omakase — her 100% vegan Japanese tasting menu — launches.
Each step was a deliberate deepening of the same idea, not a pivot away from it.
WakaMama Omakase: Where the Movement Became a Meal
Wakamama is Singapore's traditional Japanese chef-led tasting menu. The cuisine is fully plant-based, fermentation-led, and gluten-free friendly. Nothing about it is apologetic or substitutional. It is fine dining on its own terms.
Koji fermentation sits at the heart of the kitchen — house-made miso, shio koji, amazake, plant-based garums — the same techniques used at the world's most celebrated restaurants, from Noma to Den. The menu is paired optionally with Studio Ghibli-inspired non-alcoholic mocktails, because Joyce does not believe a fine dining experience should depend on alcohol to feel complete.
Every detail has an engineer's logic and a teacher's intention behind it.
A Restaurant That Still Acts Like a Classroom
Wakamama is not just a restaurant. It is the most public expression of a mission Joyce has been running for over a decade.
She continues to offer sustainable workshops and vegan cooking classes for families and corporate groups who want to adopt a more eco-conscious lifestyle. The restaurant supports socially conscious initiatives, including programmes that benefit the autism community.
And — perhaps the clearest sign of the kind of place Wakamama is — furry friends are welcome.
Joyce holds close a line from Mother Teresa: "Not all of us can do great things. But we can do small things with great love." Her own version is shorter. Drop a pebble, make more positive ripples.
Her Real Motive
Ask Joyce why she does any of this and she will not talk first about fine dining, awards, or restaurant reviews. She will talk about her two family.
Everything — the workshops, the café, the restaurant, the teaching across seven countries, the long hours of fermenting and composting and re-using and refusing — is driven by the hope that her children, and the next generation, will still get to grow up under blue skies and white clouds.
She started alone, during COVID, with only her convictions to work with. A pebble, dropped deliberately. The ripples are now a restaurant.
At a Glance
Founder & Chef: Joyce Cheng Role: Founder of Back2Basic and Wakamama Omakase; raw vegan chef Born: Hong Kong Raised: Toronto, Canada Based: Singapore Previous career: Industrial engineer Teaching since: 2014 (non-profit sustainability and upcycling workshops) International workshops conducted in: Kazakhstan, South Africa, Seoul, Taiwan, Nepal, Hong Kong, Singapore Singapore teaching partners include: NEA, NUS, NTU, ITE, community centres, local schools, SAM (Singapore Art Museum), Six Senses Hotel Businesses founded:
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Back2Basic — non-profit sustainable workshops (2014), home-based business (2019), Back2Basic Picnic Cafe (2020)
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Wakamama — 100% vegan Japanese Omakase tasting menu (2021) Signature philosophy: Back2Basic — sustainable lifestyle across food, packaging, personal products, and everyday living Community commitments: sustainability education, support for the autism community, pet-friendly dining
Reserve a seat at the Wakamama counter and experience the restaurant where a decade of sustainability work became a meal.